In an image forming apparatus using electrophotography, according to image data, a light source is caused to emit light onto a surface of an image bearing body such as a photoconductor drum which is charged to a predetermined electric potential to form an electrostatic latent image and a developing apparatus is used to attach toner to the electrostatic latent image to form a toner image.
As a light source used for exposing an image bearing body, an LED array in which multiple LEDs (light emitting diodes) and an LD (laser diode) are arranged in one dimension is being commercialized.
The LD emits light in correspondence with the image data while scanning the surface of the image bearing body to perform light exposure, the LED array is provided parallel to a sheet width direction, and multiple LEDs are caused to emit light simultaneously in correspondence with the image data to perform the light exposure on the image bearing body.
Here, an inverted image may be formed when the image data transmitted from a controller of the image forming apparatus are output as they are, depending on a scanning direction of the LD or a fixing direction of the LED array. Thus, in a light source control apparatus which controls light emitting of such a light source, it is common to perform a mirroring process which inverts the image data.
For example, in Patent Document 1, an image forming apparatus is disclosed which makes it possible to always form high quality images without causing any variation in an edge process of pixel data of a target image portion and a reference image portion by performing image processing such that output data of an image at the time of forward scan outputting of a mirroring output unit and output data of an image at the time of reverse scan outputting of a mirroring output unit become symmetrical between the left and the right.
In the image forming apparatus in Patent Document 1, the image data are stored in a buffer memory and a mirroring process is performed by a mirroring processing circuit which is connected to the buffer memory.
Therefore, it is necessary to separately provide a mirroring processing circuit to perform the image data process on an internal pattern such as concentration correcting data, position aligning data, etc., which are generated after the mirroring processing circuit, leading to a cost increase due to an increase in processing size and circuit size.
Patent Document
Patent Document 1: JP2002-96505A